Roto Riteup: May 21st, 2012

Do you have a case of the Mondays? If you do, you need to wake yourself up and get to work, because you’re not being paid to read this. Cyberslacking hurts everyone.

• Prospect alert! Matt Adams has been called up by the Cardinals in wake of Lance Berkman’s knee injury. Despite the presence of both Allen Craig and Matt Carpenter, the Cardinals have made it clear they won’t waste Adams’ time in the bigs by having him sit idle on the bench. You probably already have heard Adams’ name thrown about, mainly because he has enough power to light up New York City for a night. I don’t suspect Adams is going to come up and tear the league apart, and even if he did, it’s hard to see St. Louis finding a spot for him in the lineup on a regular basis. Temper your enthusiasm in re-draft leagues, but get excited for a preview of sorts in keeper leagues.

• With one of the weirder injury problems in a while, Mark Ellis is going miss a significant amount of time. Ellis was taken out trying to turn a double-play against the Cardinals, and his injury resulted in an emergency fasciotomy. I may have my PhD from Ball So Hard University, but I’m not a doctor of the medical kind, so it’s hard for me to do anything other than search Wikipedia for an answer. (I’d recommend you don’t search Wikipedia, by the way, because the pictures are sort of gross). Ellis was having a surprisingly fruitful fantasy campaign this year, but he probably won’t see the field again until August, so you’ll need to move on in a big way.

• Max Scherzer may have struck out 15 Pittsburgh Pirates, but that wasn’t the most fascinating part of his start on Sunday. Scherzer allowed two homers; one to Rod Barajas, who has trouble making contact with a ball sitting on a tee.

• Wei-Yin Chen’s demonry ended yesterday, as he struggled with both walks and homers against the Nationals. Away from Camden Yards, Chen somehow allowed Stephen Strasburg to hit a dinger. Chen has been relatively fortunate thus far, and while I still like his strikeout rates, he could have a hard time keeping the ball in the yard after it warms up in Baltimore.

For those of you who play daily fantasy games like FanGraphs: The Game, or just like to stream players, here are a couple matchups you may be able to exploit.

A Pitcher for Today: Jerome Williams at OAK
Williams’ is nothing special, but he’s pitching in Oakland, so that’s always a plus. His start will be totally dependant on how the A’s approach their at-bats against the sinkerballer.

A Pitcher for Tomorrow: Travis Wood at HOU
I just can’t quit you, Travis Wood. I just can’t.

A Hitter for Today: Giancarlo Stanton vs COL (Moyer)
Mikey isn’t going to put up with Moyer’s softball pitches. I smell at least a homer and a double.